


carrion comfort

by Sarah T (SarahT), SarahT



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Not a Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10015034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/SarahT
Summary: Companionship is where you find it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Spike for betaing.

The first glimpse _was_ just a glimpse, in the blurred confusion as he climbed down from the helicopter under the roar of the blades.Quite the team had been scrambled to Berwick-upon-Tweed in his honor: Detective Inspector Lestrade, a doctor, two nurses, a psychiatrist who came well-supplied, a quartet of analysts ready to take on any task from urgent research to scrambling to stop a terrorist attack, three heavily-armed security guards, and two drivers.Seeing the crowd made his heart sink; he’d spent the entire ride back from the island yearning for the moment when he could finally escape all scrutiny.He couldn’t tell whether the degree of the response signified his importance or the intensity of someone’s wish to learn what vulnerability he might reveal in that grim hour.The group ringed him, and, as he glanced around, trying to identify the ones with ulterior motives, another figure slid into his peripheral vision.He blinked and turned his head sharply, but the man he thought he’d seen was gone.There was only his assistant, bearing one of his overcoats.

As he waved off medical attention and allowed her to help him into it, the figure lingered in his mind, like an afterimage.

  


Back in the London flat, Andrea dismissed forcefully at the door, he walked straight to the decanter and poured two fingers of Scotch.He drank it so quickly his esophagus almost rebelled.No matter.Another two. 

This time, he felt that he was going to be sick. 

As he hesitated near the bin, his phone began to ring.Lady Smallwood, no doubt. 

He poured another and walked over to the windows, clutching the glass.At this time of night, the heavy curtains were drawn.The ringing followed, which puzzled him briefly.Ah, yes.The phone was in his coat pocket and he hadn’t taken off his coat.

He pulled the curtain back and peered out.The square was quiet and dark at night, with only the occasional black car passing to disturb the peace.He took another swallow and rested his forehead against the glass.

Sherlock had been ready to shoot him.

He remembered the moment he’d pushed himself off the wall, into the light, the terrified slow blink he hadn’t quite been able to control as he moved forward.He’d seen it coming since he’d seen the gun.Neither of the other two had.

Moving along through the “tests,” all the death and emotion, knowing that Sherlock would be asked to make a choice.Knowing what it would be.Helpless to do anything except try to smooth the way for him.

It had been quite ingenious of Euros to contrive such a secret torture within a torture.He really must congratulate her in future.

He opened his eyes.Someone was standing beneath the trees directly opposite his building, looking up.He startled.The glass slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor.He stooped to retrieve it, and when he stood again, the street was empty.

Tall.A man as tall as him, in a sharply-cut dark coat.Pale, enough to be seen even in the shadows.Hair, a red gone harsh in the streetlight.

His face…he rubbed his eyes.

He should call security at once.He could not call security to describe an observer whose face had seemed to resemble his own.That would bring the discreet specialist, on a non-voluntary basis this time.

Something ought to be done about the spill on the floor. 

He pulled the curtains closed and went to bed.

  


In the morning, it was easy to decide that his vision of the night before had been the effect of too much alcohol on a brain that hadn’t slept in more than forty-eight hours.Certainly Mycroft had no spare attention to devote to the question.Between the politics attendant on the emergency meeting of the Sherrinford oversight committee and the necessity of reviewing virtually every major operation of the past three years, his mind was, for once, fully engaged.It was not the time to ponder something that in all likelihood was the result of a brief unrecognized doze against his living room window.

The meeting was easier than expected, largely because the committee members chose to be interested in superficial questions only.They had, after all, approved the various approaches to Euros over the years; the Stradivarius had been purchased with departmental funds.No one was eager to revisit the wisdom of that set of decisions.Far easier to focus on the folly of the conveniently deceased governor, with a brief excursion to Mycroft’s “habitual reckless disregard of one’s personal security” to demonstrate pointedly to any outside observers that the inquiry had not been a mere whitewash.Mycroft met this criticism with an outward show of submission but internal indifference.The only real difficulty was posed by Lady Smallwood, who, despite her controlled demeanor, could not quite hide the element of personal concern in her interest in the night’s events.He found that he could not meet her eyes.At the end of his testimony, he hurried out of the room to avoid speaking to her.

The review was more challenging.Every single person who had served at Sherrinford since that disastrous Christmas had to be held until he was able to go through their files for signs of compromise.As a priority, however, he had to interview all current personnel for any hints at other plans Euros might have made.Listening to the men talking in dazed tones about how _understanding_ she was, how _clever_ , how she’d made everything _so clear_ , was grim and dreary work.The talk of the ones who were plainly sexually infatuated with her gave him the chills of intestinal illness.They all hated _him_ , of course—“jealous, sad little man who couldn’t begin to appreciate her,” spat the librarian, “she should have killed you”—and this rear-view-mirror glimpse of Euros’s own feelings, while hardly surprising after recent events, left him more melancholy than he would have expected.

It was past three when he called it a night.As he waited for the elevator, his phone began to ring again.Lestrade.He briefly considered picking up.Lestrade was not one of the great thinkers of the present age, but he had proven his loyalty and discretion multiple times over.Then he remembered the night before, the way he’d touched Mycroft’s arm as he’d gotten into the car and said, “If you need someone to talk to…”He could play the conversation through in his mind: the bitter coffee, the death witnessed on the job when he was a rookie, the “tough choices” of his line of work, “you’re not a machine, you know; no one expects you to be.”The pity, and beneath it, the relief: Mycroft Holmes had turned out to be weaker than him, after all.Not to be borne.He declined the call just as the elevator door opened.

He stepped into the elevator and hit the ground floor button.As he stepped back, he nearly bumped into someone.He whirled about and stared.

The man again.This time, it was impossible to deny the closeness of their resemblance.But he was Mycroft fifteen pounds lighter and so improbably pale that the veins stood out in his face like marbling.There was a heaviness around his eyes and his lips were very dry.He met Mycroft’s eyes with perfect composure.

“Who are you?” Mycroft demanded.

The man smiled.“Well,” he said, gently, but as if to a child who had disappointed him.His voice was so soft, Mycroft had to lean in to be sure of hearing it. “What a very odd question.”

That was enough.Mycroft reached back for the panic button, but his fingers slid uselessly over brushed metal, not plastic.He turned his head to find the button and jabbed it frantically, backing up against the elevator door. 

When he looked up, the man was gone.

Five seconds later, he was making painful explanations to two armed guards about having pressed the wrong button in his exhaustion.Just what he’d needed to make the day complete. 

  


Mycroft had expected his parents to give way to grief.He had known it would be frustrating—parents who had chosen to behave as if their child had never _existed_ had little claim to sorrow over the years lost with her—but he had been prepared to extend them tolerance.However, as ever when he’d expected his parents to react in a more or less reasonable way, he’d ended in cursing his own folly.

Mummy’s words were so harsh that at first he felt genuinely stricken and small.How _could_ he have lied to everyone for so many years?How dared he break up the family?Who had given him the right to be so cruel?But, seeing his reaction, she’d pressed too hard. _Whatever Euros had done, she was still_ _their daughter_.

His mind revolted against the absurdity.He could have laughed.Whatever she’d done. 

Whatever she’d done.Such as coming within an inch of coercing one of their sons to kill the other one. 

Such as the contents of the folder he’d forced himself to compile during the review and contemplated daily.It sat in the top drawer of his desk, and, as Mummy continued, he was just a breath away from pulling it out, spilling the pictures across the desk to silence her.The two little girls in their beds with their throats slashed, the mother who had obviously heard the screaming and come running stretched out on the floor in a pool of her own blood, the living room wall sprayed with the psychiatrist’s brain tissue.The nurse’s mangled body, sprawled obscenely on the examining table in the infirmary.The pathetic pile of bones and rotted clothing and impossibly cruel dog bowl and collar that had been Victor Trevor.

But, he realized, this would have no effect.Mummy would not be fair.Even that panoply of horror would be deemed his fault.There were no words he could speak, no actions he could take, no mysteries he could reveal that would change that. 

The recognition should have been a relief.It wasn’t. 

She had always been like this.This catastrophe meant that she _would_ always be like this.Mycroft had given her something to hold over him til death. 

She was still talking, scolding, berating.Vicious words that barely registered but would not stop.Even Sherlock’s half-hearted defense was but more leverage for an attack.

Sherlock, Sherlock, _always the grownup_.He had a file for that, too, but it would be equally useless.There was nothing to do but let the discussion run its course.Once he’d finally ushered them all out of the office, he _did_ laugh, quick and bitter, but nearly choked on it.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turned back. 

The man was seated at his desk, his feet up, tapping a pencil against his nails.

“You’re quite right,” he said, in that soft, caressing voice.“She won’t ever change.She’s never cared for you, and now she’s finally found her justification.”

His tone both acknowledged the cruelty of the situation and relished it.Mycroft shivered, a cold blankness rolling through him, robbing his extremities of strength.There was a panic button less than two feet away.It might have been a thousand miles.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, mechanically.“This is a secure facility.”

“It is, technically, a public place.I’m permitted.”

“You’re per—who _are_ you?”

“You know that perfectly well, Mycroft,” he said patiently.

“No,” he insisted, “I don’t.”

“Don’t you?” The man rose with weary elegance and tugged down his jacket with a sharp little jerk.He circled the desk to Mycroft, stopping when he was less than a foot away.Dead black, dead white, plain red tie, no texture or ornament.“I’m the one who knows how disappointing it was for a brilliant mathematician to give up her career for a boy who could never give her anything of what she’d been promised.I’m the one who knows that her husband, who’d just wanted a lad to go fishing with—not so much to ask, was it?—got a prissy little swot instead.I’m the one who knows that Sherlock—“

“Enough!”It was ripped from him.He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes.“I don’t want to hear this.”

“Oh, Mycroft,” the man’s voice was breathless amusement, “You can’t stop.”

For a moment, it felt true, paralyzingly true.Then he pushed it away.“I’m calling security,” he said, and lowered his hands.

Gone.He looked around the room, even glanced under the desk.Gone.

But he’d left a crushing atmosphere in the room.Mycroft dropped back into his chair.He watched his hands move to pull the folder from the drawer, and then flip it open. 

From the family pictures, he could reconstruct their final evening, second by second.He sat there and did.Again.

  


For the next several days, Mycroft could feel the man’s presence lingering at the edges of his vision, pressing in.He quickly learned that drink only thickened the sensation.Cigarettes and work, though, diluted it, and even more so in combination.Fortunately, given recent events, he needed no excuse to spend every waking hour in the office.Smoking in a government facility violated a half-dozen regulations, but his authority meant little if he couldn’t abuse it at need. 

The proximity of others also kept the man at bay; he did not threaten to appear when someone else was in the room with Mycroft.He still found being around his actual colleagues excruciating, however.So he suddenly became more tolerant of the presence of juniors and support staff than he had ever been in his entire career.He ordered extra files, requested superfluous briefings, wandered the halls at odd hours “inspecting security arrangements.”This undoubtedly drew its own commentary from certain interested observers; still, it was the best expedient he could manage under the circumstances.But it led, predictably, to a mistake.

Mycroft had long been aware that, to many of the younger men of the intelligence services, he had a distinct glamor.He had always been judicious and discreet about exploiting it.He did not initiate and he did not pursue.But, very occasionally, one of the most beautiful young men throwing themselves at him was permitted not to miss.He could mark on his calendar in advance how long the dalliance would last; within six to eight weeks, the young man would be asking of Mycroft things he had no intention of giving anyone.Bafflement, yelling, and breakdown were the inevitable result.But still, from time to time, he would give way to the impulse.

He had known of young Myers’s attraction for months now.The analyst was a delicate blond with dazzling blue eyes and long slender fingers (cellist, Mycroft remembered, fluent in Japanese, mediocre marksman).His infatuation had to date primarily been expressed in the form of agonized choice of neckties and the sudden appearance on MI6 catering trays of the tea he’d seen Mycroft drinking at an MI5 conference.After the report of Mycroft’s near-death had gotten around, Myers had become especially attentive, earnestly inquiring after his well-being, constantly bringing in files he’d requested from central, and attempting to anticipate his requests (with mixed results).Mycroft had more than once caught him staring covertly as he chain-smoked, and the resulting tint in his cheeks was appealing.At the end of one particularly long day, as Myers organized the files for return to central with a meticulous care that spoke of genuine ardor and with no prospect that he would have other company til morning, Mycroft said abruptly, “Peter, would you care for a drink?”

Five hours later, he rose from a bed at the Horseguards and padded across to the bathroom.The room had a magnificent view across the river, the Eye glimmering at him where the curtain gapped.He shut the door behind him and stared in the mirror, feeling vaguely nauseated.The sex had been…satisfactory, he supposed, judging by the physical results, but he had been overcome halfway with the sense that it was all a desperate grappling in the face of meaninglessness.The feeling had knocked him right out of his body and left him watching the action from a distance, half-disgusted, half-sad.He shook his head and splashed water into his face.As he toweled it off, he became aware that he was not alone in the room.

“Yes,” the man said.“You do remember how you thought of men like yourself when you were Peter’s age.”

He swallowed.

“Predatory and pathetic at once.”Regret, commiseration in his voice for what Mycroft had had to endure.“So much ugliness.So much shame.You remember Uncle Rudy.“

“ _Uncle Rudy never—_!”

“Didn’t he?” The man tilted his head.“You sound very sure.”

Mycroft had to lean over the sink, even though that meant turning his back.The man still loomed in the mirror above him, frowning solicitously.

“It would explain a great deal, after all.They say there are cycles, and, well…You never _meant_ any harm, surely.But what else had you learned, poor boy?”

He could see craquelure spreading over the surface of reality, threatening to shatter and leave behind hideous fragments.“You’re _lying_.”

A pause.Then a hand patted him gently on the back.“Well, Mycroft, if that’s still what you think, there’s no need to torture yourself.”

Myers knocked on the bathroom door.“Mycroft?Are you all right?”

“After all, there’s a very pretty young man out there waiting for you to ravish him again.”

Mycroft took a deep breath, turned around, and opened the door.Peter stood there, face flushed and hair on end with sleep, indeed delicate enough to invite a second ravishing.Mycroft went past him into the room and found his vest and pants, shoes and overcoat.The hotel could send the rest of the clothes later.“Do enjoy breakfast,” he said.“There will be a car to take you home when you’re ready.”

“Mycroft!” he protested.“It’s the middle of the night.What are you doing?”

“I have to go,” he said, not needing to see Myers’s face to know exactly what dark thoughts were blossoming in his brain.

He lit a cigarette the moment he was outside, praying it would be enough.

  


Two days later, his contemplation of fluctuations in shipping insurance rates on the North Sea in conjunction with troop movements in Ukraine was interrupted by the entrance of Lady Smallwood. She glanced up at the faint cloud of smoke over the room and said, “Somewhere, there is a health and safety officer desperately trying to work up the nerve to write you a stern memo.”

Humor, as a means of raising genuine concern while allowing both parties to pretend that nothing important had been said.A supposed kindness.Hateful.He’d been artfully avoiding one-on-ones with her for just this reason. 

“To be given all the attention it merits,” he said.“What can I do for you?”

Noting his dry tone, she arranged herself carefully in the seat opposite his desk, hands clasped in her lap, eyes meeting his directly.“I want to seek your opinion on a hypothetical situation.”

“Yes?”

“Suppose I have a colleague,” she began.“An _exceptionally_ gifted colleague, who is indispensable in my work.He recently underwent a traumatic experience of which it seems no one in his life, including he himself, is willing to acknowledge the magnitude.”

He tensed.“Go on.”

“I am by no means on such personal terms with this colleague as to be able to offer him advice or,” she hesitated, “comfort.And, indeed, the quality of his work isn’t suffering.However, I fear it may have momentarily slipped his attention that, while his influence is extraordinary, due to his own decisions over time on how best to position himself with respect to our various institutions, his _formal_ authority is quite limited.His ability to command events depends not merely on his being infallible, but on his being _perceived_ as infallible.And, while he may not be aware of it, of late that perception has begun to erode.This jeopardizes both his work and mine as well as, I believe, ultimately the security of Her Majesty’s government.”

He still had a moment or two.“Indeed,” he said, feeling his lips going numb.

“What would you advise that I do?”

The quality of his work wasn’t suffering.He clung to the thought.Let her give him up, personally.Let them all give him up.It was not their _camaraderie_ he wanted.It had been a mistake, trying to cultivate a network of reliable senior colleagues.A diversion of his energies.He could bury himself down here and _work_ without distraction or waste of time.Despite what Lady Smallwood was saying, they would have to listen.As long as the quality of the work didn’t suffer.

And yet the thought of her walking out the door and leaving him to it was almost unbearable.

“I doubt your colleague would welcome a personal intervention,” he told her.“No doubt he is managing things as seems best to him.”

Her expression, the impersonal curiosity of a professional inquiry, lost a degree of detachment.He nearly flinched back. 

“But if he’s wrong?”

“Then matters will play out as they must.I can't imagine your colleague appreciating the kind of ‘assistance’ offered by the services these days.”

“You think he would prefer losing his position?”

Her gaze was searching.He met it, aware of how dull his own eyes must seem.“I think he will find a new equilibrium.Given enough time.”

“All right, Mycroft.”She rose.“As ever, thank you for your insight.”

“My pleasure, Elizabeth.”

He should have risen when she did.His legs, however, informed him they would bear no weight.Her brows furrowed slightly at the apparent discourtesy, but then she turned to go.She seemed to be receding much more quickly than she could actually have moved to the door.He picked up a report, which he was suddenly barely able to lift, to hide the sight.

She paused there.“Mycroft?”

He couldn’t look up.“Mmm?”

Another, longer pause.“Don’t lose my card.”

“I never lose anything, Elizabeth.”

“If you say so,” she said.“Good afternoon.”

  


Mycroft had arranged three cars for the trip back from the recital; one for his parents, one for Sherlock, one for him.As they left the heliport and he saw them waiting, he had never been so grateful for his own foresight.He had managed somehow.His demeanor on arrival had given nothing away to Sherlock or Euros.But, regardless of what they told themselves, he was a musician, too (and a better composer than either of them), and he was not _deaf_.He had not been able to work out fully the private language they’d developed, but he could recognize the sudden outbreaks of the twelve-tone system amidst their neoclassicism for what they were: unflattering references to himself.He’d disguised his reaction to that, too, played bored and pompous and impatient for them.As perceptive as both of them were, they had long cultivated—he had long permitted them to cultivate—the habit of seeing in him what it was most convenient for them to see, and in the flush of their first communications, to have Mycroft as the fool and the outsider against whom they could define themselves was essential. 

And when Mummy had patted his hand, conveying her magnanimous attempt to begin the hard work of forgiving him, he had not pulled away or begun screaming, either.All she saw was a suitably chastened son, one who would play the necessary role in her personal narrative again.

He had been successful, but it had taken almost every ounce of his fragmenting self-control, and having the long trip down to London to recover in solitude was an absolute necessity.He looked over at Sherlock, standing by his own car, full of supreme self-satisfaction but also…content.He could find no time in his own memory when Sherlock had looked that way because of _him_.In fact, even now, as he glanced at him, a slight frown skated over Sherlock’s face.Mycroft turned away sharply.He completed his perfunctory farewells to their parents, climbed into the car, and leaned back and shut his eyes as it pulled away.

“Tell me, what did you do that for?”

He opened his eyes.He should have expected this.The man was squinting at him thoughtfully.

“Do what for?”

“Make a public display of yourself in front of the new staff as a man with no authority.Trail around after Sherlock and Violet and Siger like a kicked puppy hoping for a crumb of affection.It can’t have been pleasant for you.”

He winced.“I had to make sure that no harm came to them.”

“Because you did that so well before?All these family entanglements that persist so long after the illusion of family feeling is gone…they must be _exhausting_.”

He felt the resolution, already latent in his mind, crystallize: no more of this.No more of his parents. 

“Yes, it’s time to put an end to all that nonsense.”Mycroft’s hand was resting on the seat next to him.The man stretched out a finger and just brushed it slowly across one of Mycroft’s fingernails.It was cold, the deep chill of a stone that had stood in a barrow for centuries.Mycroft gritted his teeth and his hand twitched involuntarily, but he flattened it and did not pull away.The man took this as invitation to stroke down Mycroft’s finger, and, seeing no reaction, to start to intertwine his hand with Mycroft’s.At this, Mycroft did jerk away, folding his fingers up and dropping his hand in his lap.The man gave him that slight curl of a smile again, with no sign of anger.His apparently infinite patience felt as draining as his touch.

They rode back to London in silence that way.Mycroft couldn’t read the reports he’d brought, so he settled for studying the view out the window.He had made this trip many times.He seemed to recall that he had thought much of it scenic, but instead the entire landscape seemed like a hollow mockery. _For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away…_

He had hoped that he might leave the man behind in the car, but as he waved the fob at the reader on his front door and leaned in for the biometric check, Mycroft could feel him standing right behind him.He stepped inside and glanced back.The man was waiting politely on the walk.

“You’re not coming in?” he said, trying for sarcastic disappointment.

The man looked pained, as if Mycroft had made an insensitive reference.“You’ve never asked me into your home, Mycroft.”

He could, he thought, possibly shut the door.Gain an evening’s respite.But the choice required will, and he was so very tired.He thought of that chill, the way it might swallow up everything. 

“Remind me, what was it Euros said to you when she left you in the cell?”

“‘I’m going to take your place now, Mycroft,’” Mycroft said, and the act of repeating it took him back to that cell, the day of all the deaths, and he wasn’t sure now that he’d ever left.He needed to lie down, to be numb as quickly as possible.“You may as well.”

He didn’t look back, but walked straight upstairs to his bedroom, where he dropped his coat and briefcase, shed his shoes, and dropped onto the bed.The pillow pressed against the side of his face as he stared into the darkness.He could hear the man moving through the other rooms, doing God knew what, but eventually he came in.

“So much unnecessary suffering,” he said, crawling into the bed, settling behind Mycroft.He was so cold.Like a repudiation of all mercy and kindness and affection.His arm curled around Mycroft’s waist, a gesture far too intimate to be merely sexual.Mycroft was racked with shivers, pain deep in his bones, and then he couldn’t move at all.“But I’m here now.”


End file.
